The Era of Oprah Ending?

LOS ANGELES — It’s not easy to find a fresh way to photograph Oprah Winfrey.

That’s why the editors of O, The Oprah Magazine, recently tried to create a shot that recalled the glory days of Ms. Winfrey’s syndicated talk show. They arranged to photograph her for its April 2013 issue as she stepped onstage to speak to 5,000 attendees at the magazine’s annual conference, a New Age slumber party of sorts for women held at the convention center here last month. When Ms. Winfrey confidently strode out dressed in a sea foam green V-neck dress and a pair of perilously tall ruby red stilettos, the audience collectively leapt to its feet and shrieked at the sight of her.

“I love you, Oprah,” some women shouted, while other fans brushed away tears. “I love you back,” she responded in her signature commanding voice. “It’s no small thing to get the dough to come here.”

Ms. Winfrey, who used to receive this kind of applause from fans five days a week, has had fewer such receptions since the talk show she hosted for 25 years ended 18 months ago. The cable network OWN, which she started with Discovery Communications, is emerging from low ratings and management shake-ups. And without a regular presence on daytime network television, she cannot steer traffic to her other products as easily as in the past. Her magazine, in particular, has experienced a decline in advertising revenue and newsstand sales since the talk show finished.

“She’s still Oprah. But she’s still struggling,” said Janice Peck, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado who wrote the 2008 book “The Age of Oprah.” “I think she’s scared, even though she’s very, very rich and she’s always going to be very, very rich. The possibility of failure, it’s quite scary.”

Ms. Winfrey, 58, has shown some signs of strain. She arrived at the conference with faint shadows under her eyes and announced to her best friend, Gayle King, and the audience simultaneously that she had a breast cancer scare the week before. (It was ultimately a false alarm.) When Ms. King grew visibly upset, one woman chided Ms. Winfrey for not telling her friend ahead of time and ordered her to apologize to Ms. King — all before an audience. Ms. Winfrey also did not hide her dissatisfaction with the criticism she had faced. She told the audience, “the press tried to cut me off at the knees” in its coverage of OWN, and bristled at questions about the challenges her magazine confronted.

“I don’t care what the form is,” Ms. Winfrey said with the conviction of a preacher. “I care about what the message is.”

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The December issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

With signs of progress at OWN, Ms. Winfrey now has more time to devote to other media platforms — her magazine, her radio channel on XM Satellite Radio, her Facebook page, which has 7.8 million subscribers, her Twitter account, which has nearly 15 million followers, and her latest content channel on The Huffington Post.

“It’s all an opportunity to speak to people,” Ms. Winfrey said as she sat for an interview during the conference, a pair of glittery gold stilettos slung in her hand and a couple of handlers in the corner quietly tapping away at smartphones. She pushed aside a bottle of sparkling water, a glass with a silver straw and a delicate orchid placed before her and spoke frankly about her plans.

“Ultimately, you have to make money because you are a business. I let other people worry about that. I worry about the message. I am always, always, always about holding true to the vision and the message, and when you are true to that, then people respond.”

When it comes to the magazine, Ms. Winfrey said her staff prepared her to expect a 25 percent decline in newsstand sales after the talk show ended. (It has been closer to 22 percent.) And while she acknowledged that she enjoyed “holding the magazine in my hand,” she was pragmatic about print’s future and said she would stop publishing a print magazine if it were not profitable.

“Obviously, the show was helping in ways that you know I hadn’t accounted for,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I’m not interested, you know, in bleeding money.”

Ms. Winfrey, who spoke in a conference room over the roars of an expectant crowd in the convention space below, said she knew that her brand’s strength stemmed from how she resonated with a breadth of viewers.

“A little instinct that I had when I started the Oprah show in Chicago, I always knew it and it wasn’t cockiness. It was just a knowingness that people are the same in Chicago as they are in Alabama as they are in Rhode Island as they are in Seattle,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I knew that. I could feel that because I’m with the audience every day.”

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Some 5,000 fans attended an O magazine conference last month.Credit
Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Ms. Winfrey wants that audience for the magazine, but she wants its readers to be younger. The median age for an O reader is 49, according to data tracked by the audience measurement company GfK MRI. (By comparison, Vogue’s median is 35.6 and Real Simple’s is 46.3.) Ms. Winfrey said she would like to attract women “in their 30s or perhaps their 20s, to be able to reach people when they are looking to fulfill their destiny.” She added, “By the time you’re 40, 42, you should have kind of figured it out already.”

That may be a tougher climb. While articles in women’s magazines like Glamour or Cosmopolitan often focus on new sex positions to try and embarrassing dates, O’s coverage tends to appeal to an older crowd. Recent articles discussed how tea helps lower blood pressure and offered advice on how to talk to a doctor about medical history. Beth Babyak, a 40-year-old Oprah fan who was attending her second conference, said she did not subscribe to the magazine.

“I find it still skews older,” Ms. Babyak said. When she does read it, she added, “I skip through sections.”

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Ms. Winfrey has been reaching some younger women through former talk show guests turned magazine contributors. Heather Hooke, 27, and her sister, Summer Swindell, 32, both subscribers, attended the conference because they like certain speakers who used to appear on Ms. Winfrey’s show, like Martha Beck, a life coach who recently wrote columns about managing anxiety and being more decisive. Ms. Swindell also follows the sex columnist Dr. Laura Berman, who appears on Ms. Winfrey’s radio network. Both Ms. Hooke and Ms. Swindell seemed to view Ms. Winfrey as a maternal figure who shepherds this self-help flock.

“She’s like the mother of every mother,” Ms. Swindell said.

When Ms. Winfrey started the magazine a dozen years ago, it broadened her audience to include more affluent and educated readers than viewers of her TV program. (An issue costs $4.50 on newsstands.) And that initially paid off. Ms. Peck said the magazine’s debut in April 2000 was one of the most financially successful in the industry’s history. Readers devoured musings from Ms. Winfrey and columns written by talk show guests like Dr. Phil McGraw and Suze Orman. Ms. Orman called contributing to the magazine and attending the conference vital to her work because of the exposure she gets to her fans.

“I’ve written for Oprah’s magazine since Day 1,” Ms. Orman said after taking refuge from the hordes of fans who followed her from a book signing at the conference at a Jenny Craig booth, which was waiting for another guest, Valerie Bertinelli. “I wrote for the magazine so it would bring people into my life.”

While its circulation and advertising clearly benefited from the talk show’s popularity, Ms. King, the magazine’s editor at large, said that Ms. Winfrey never let the magazine depend too heavily on the program to drive sales.

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Aside from the magazine, which had its debut in 2000, Oprah Winfrey has a presence on cable TV, radio, Facebook and Twitter, where she has nearly 15 million followers.

“We always thought there was something in the magazine that could be promoted on the show, at least once a month. But Oprah didn’t feel that way,” Ms. King said. “That’s just not how she rolls, as the kids say.”

Hearst executives were also prepared for sales to take a hit once the show ended. Susan Casey, the magazine’s editor in chief since 2010, said that some readers thought when the talk show ended, the magazine was folding as well. But that confusion seems to have passed, and the magazine is attracting attention to itself by collaborating with other parts of Ms. Winfrey’s empire. It coordinated with OWN to produce “Oprah’s Favorite Things” episode that was broadcast on Nov. 18 and featured items appearing in O’s December issue, which included high-end items like a $1,440 electric bike. The July issue highlighted Ms. Winfrey’s pick for her revived book club.

Ms. Winfrey is confident she will draw more younger fans because people want “what we have to say in this magazine about fulfilling your destiny, who you’re meant to be, living your best life.” That’s the kind of product Ms. Winfrey predicts people, regardless of age, will continue to pay for.

“You’re never going to run out of people who are looking for a more joyful life,” she said. Some of the answers to Ms. Winfrey’s quest for a younger audience may simply be bridged by her original fans. Lynne Shewan, 56, a retired special education teacher from East Setauket, N.Y., attended the conference to get the advice from Ms. Winfrey she has been missing since the show ended. She said that she kept her magazine subscription and liked the columnists and updates about Ms. Winfrey. She watches Ms. Winfrey’s “Lifeclass” show on OWN for her television fix.

Ms. Shewan noted that the conference gave Ms. Winfrey one new convert. Ms. Shewan invited her 24-year-old daughter, Briana, who initially laughed at the offer, calling the gathering “the Oprah convention.”

But throughout the day, Briana Shewan’s opinions changed.

“I was more into it than I thought I would be,” Ms. Shewan said.

The question for Hearst and Ms. Winfrey is whether there are enough of those younger readers waiting to embrace O’s message.

“For sure Hearst wants to make some money,” Ms. Winfrey said. “You know, every time I get a check from it, it’s like ‘Wow, this is amazing. I get paid for doing this.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on November 26, 2012, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Oprah at a Crossroads. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe